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You Wrote What!?!
How do you prevent a post from going out to 10,000 people chock full of grammatical and punctuation errors? Do you use a grammer check program? Do you proofread? Do you care? When I first started posting, I did none of the above. I like to keep it real.
I started to post in a few locations and comments would come back that I should check my spelling and grammar.
One day I cut and pasted something into Word - I am not very fluent in word processors - and voila, all of the errors were right there in front of me - a great many of them, in fact. "Great," I thought, "I can just correct them." Wrong!....at least not the errors I had. If you type something like, "I am going to tell you mother," the program will not notice when the word "your" is typed "you" because it is correctly spelled. There are no squiggly lines to tell you about the error. So what should you do? It may seem obvious to some of you, but I was a little slow on this one. Get someone else to proofread. It is so much simpler and spares you frustration and possible embarrassment. Some readers notice when you add too many commas. When "you" is "your," or "where" is "were" or "we're." Some of you reading this are professional writers, or at the very least remember what you learned from that unnervingly strict 11th grade English teacher. This comes second nature to you. I do not fall into either group. I have also learned a hard lesson on trusting word processing tools alone. Here is a short list of common errors from
SBC * Spelling "a lot" as though it were one word, "alot."
* Writing "its" when you should use "it's," or vice versa. Use "it's" when you mean "it is." Otherwise, use "its."
* Writing "centering around." You center on and revolve around.
* Omitting apostrophes, usually in possessives.
* Using commas incorrectly, especially as substitutes for periods and semicolons; using semicolons as colons.
* Writing run-on sentences — instances in which two sentences are punctuated as though they were one sentence.
* Writing fragments or phrases instead of sentences when a sentence is required. Generally, every sentence should have a noun and a verb and usually an object.
* Writing sentences that are too long and involved and would read more clearly if turned into two or more sentences.
* Shifting the person in a sentence. If you start out using "she," don't shift to "they," "you," or "one."
* Neglecting to make the subject and the verb agree as to whether they are singular or plural. For example, "The boy and the girl is in love." You should say, they "are" in love, or the couple "is" in love.
* Shifting verb tenses. For example, "The girl said, 'Wow'. The boy says, 'Double wow'" is incorrect. Be sure to choose one tense, and use the tense consistently.
* Writing sentences with unclear pronoun references: "Jim and John played with his football." Whose football? Also, neglecting to make pronouns agree with their nouns: "The newspaper covers sports very well. They print a lot of statistics other papers don't." It is the correct pronoun.
* Being redundant. Some things bear repeating to ensure clarity, but not many things.
* Overusing adjectives and adverbs.
* Mixing up effect and affect. "Effect" is a noun: "The effect of the policy is unclear." "Affect" is a verb: "I don't know how the policy will affect me." Of course, to make things confusing, "effect" can be a verb: "We will effect the change next year," and "affect" can be a noun: "Did you notice her affect?"
* Mixing up that and which. Use "that" if the phrase following it is necessary for the meaning of the sentence: "The book that I lost will cost me $25." Use "which" and commas if the phrase following it is not necessary for the meaning of the sentence: "The book, which I bought last year, is now lost."
* Not checking carefully for errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, syntax, typing, and word meaning before handing in work. There are many more sites that can help us all prevent our posts from looking like 10-year-olds have written them. In my case, that may be an improvement. So consider this a public apology for having subjected you to such primitive writing. I know I won't be perfect, but I will try harder to prevent errors in the future. Thanks for reading and for all of your comments. Consider subscribing to the new and improved, grammatically correct version. :-)
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The copyright for this content entitled "You Wrote What!?!" has been specified by the contributor as:
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The copyright for this content has been relinquished by the author. The content may be used freely by anyone.
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